Words    Words    Words

There’s been some talk of poker.  Yes, I play poker.  For me, it’s just like meditation, except you’re thinking a lot and you make money.  My Poker Master took me in when I was six years old.  For three years, all he would let me do is shuffle cards.  Day after day, shuffling cards.  I would say to him, “When will I learn poker?”  And he would smile and say, “Your riffle is imperfect.”  Then he would hit me in the head with Super/System.

Later he would make me practice pushing chips into the pot.  For years, all I did was move chips, until my motion flowed, and the chips were part of me, and it was myself I was pushing into the middle of the table, saying, “Throw it away, you don’t have the balls to call.”

Finally he let me begin to learn.  He taught me the hand rankings, the odds of making a flush with two cards to come, as well as poker etiquette, like what to do if someone has a heart attack at the table (if he wasn’t in the hand, call the card room manager to announce an open seat).

Then the hard lessons began–discipline.  Discipline, discipline, discipline.  He would put duct tape over my mouth, bind my hands to my side, and deal me aces.

It was hard, but gratifying.  I became one with the felt.  My consciousness would expand until process was everything, results nothing, unless I took a really bad beat, in which case I had a Smith & Wesson.

Fill, or fill not.  There is no draw.

I’m on the last chapter of Tiassa, and I want to take a moment to thank Alexx Kay for his timeline, Mark Mandel for Cracks and Shards, and everyone who has been maintaining the Dragaera Wiki; these resources have been especially useful over the last couple of days.

Yes, friends, today I will be on streaming video, live from the Spinathon, starting at 1pm Central Daylight Time.  What will I be doing?  Probably standing around looking like an idiot.  But I’ve said I’ll do it, so I will, if I’m not in jail.

(Edit: our main website went down, of course while our admin is in transit and therefore away from the ‘net. However, we’ll still be recording the show and will have it embedded on the site this evening. You can also see it while live from the direct UStream link in Round Rock starting at 1pm CDT. Paypal donations can be sent directly to eposia@yahoo.com, we’re less than 7 hours from making our 48-hour fiber-spinning goal!)

Re-Edit: SpinAThon site is back up and you can watch the cams directly here: http://spinathon.reesabrown.com/node/5

Final Edit: SpinAThon finished at 42.8 hours, and much lovely fiber spun by several talented women. The fiber spun during SpinAThon will be available for bidding along with other finely crafted products in next week’s auction! Steve played for 3.5 hours and we will be posting videos from his performance within the next few days on the SpinAThon site. Thanks to everyone who participated, you all rock!

Yes, it’s a Spinathon!  What, you ask, is a Spinathon?  I have no idea, but we’re having one.

Okay, okay.  In order to raise some money for medical expenses (Reesa, if you recall, just had a radical mastectomy, which is major surgery, which they charge money for),  volunteers are going to be spinning yarn (or knitting) for as long a time as they can get sponsored, up to at least 48 hours.  We have 23.5 hours covered so far.  This is going to happen this coming weekend (May 1-2) here in Austin (well, technically Paige,TX and Round Rock).   As extra incentive, if we raise enough sponsorships to cover the second day of SpinAThon (that’s Sunday, May 2 in Round Rock TX for you local folk), I’m going to be showing up to the event for several hours and maybe doing some tunes and signing some books and pretending to be a celebrity. Reesa will also be on-site for part of both days if you’d like to meet and chat with the person who inspired the event.

If this sounds like something you want to get involved in, follow the links below:

To skip the rest and go directly to the donate button, click here for the main SpinAThon page and then click the handy donate button, found just above the letters from friends.. (We tried to link to the button directly but the link expires after a certain amount of time.)

A link to the SpinAThon main page, as well as the FAQ page.

Reesa wrote a post compiling several links and information about SpinAThon that might be useful.

Only a few more days available for you to help out with SpinAThon! We also have an auction scheduled for after SpinAThon that will be putting up for bid the yarn and knit things made during the event, as well as other donated unique pieces from artists.

This section is called “The form of value or exchange-value”

Page 47: “Commodities come into the world in the shape of use-values, articles, or goods, such as iron, linen, corn, &c.  This is their plain, homely, bodily form.  They are, however commodities, only because they are something two-fold, both objects of utility, and, at the same time, depositories of value.  They manifest themselves therefore as commodities, or have the form of commodities, only in so far as they have two forms, a physical or natural form, and a value-form.”

Lurking within the physical form of a commodity is a value form; that is, it is an expression of value.  It has value and may be treated (indeed, is treated, and was produced to be treated) as a container of value.  Not all things that have value are commodities (ie, undeveloped land); but all commodities have value.

“The value of commodities is the very opposite of the coarse materiality of their substance, not an atom of matter enters into its composition.  Turn and examine a single commodity, by itself, as we will, yet in so far as it remains an object of  value, it seems impossible to grasp it.  If, however, we bear in mind that the value of commodities has a purely social reality, and that they acquire this reality only in so far as they are expressions or embodiments of one identical substance, viz., human labour, it follows as a matter of course, that value can only manifest itself in the social relation of commodity to commodity.”

Value is meaningless in a single, isolated commodity.  It becomes important when that commodity is placed beside another of a different kind; then they enter into a relationship based on their values.  The relationship is, to be precise, exchangeability.

“Everyone knows, if he knows nothing else, that commodities have a value-form common to them all, and presenting a marked contrast with the varied bodily forms of their use-values.  I mean their money-form.”

Check.  Even the most stubborn, ignorant adherent to the Chicago School is aware that commodities are traded for money, and (though he may never have thought about it) that money has little in common with the physical form of the commodity it is buying.

“Here, however, a task is set us, the performance of which has yet even been attempted by bourgeois economy, the task of tracing the genesis of this money-form, of developing the expression of value implied in the value-relation of commodities, from its simplest, almost imperceptible outline, to the dazzling money-form. “

Reesa is recovering from surgery.  Part of the recovery process has involved some household rearranging that made it impossible for me to write.  Reesa and Nathan, while dealing with everything else, put enough effort into the problem that it’s now been solved, and I’m back to writing.  That she took the trouble to fix this (with, by the way, no help from me) under these conditions is, um, impressive seems too weak.

Anyway, Tiassa is humming along; I hope to have a completed first draft within a couple of weeks.  Those who didn’t want to wait an extra six months or so for it should thank Reesa and Nathan.

Page 45: “If one coat represents x days’ labour, two coats represent 2x days’ labour, and so on.  But assume that the duration of the labour necessary for the production of a coat becomes doubled or halved.  In the first case, one coat is worth as much as two coats were before; in the second case, two coats are only worth as much as one was before, although in both cases one coat renders the same service as before, and the useful labour embodied in it remains of the same quality.  But the quantity of labour spent on its production has altered.

“An increase in the quantity of use-values is an increase of material wealth.  With two coats, two men can be clothed, with one coat only one man.  Nevertheless, an increased quantity of material wealth may correspond to a simultaneous fall in the magnitude of its value.  This antagonistic movement has its origin in the two-fold character of labour.  Productive power has reference, of course, only to labour of some useful concrete form, the efficacy of any special productive activity during a given time being dependent on its productiveness.  Useful labour becomes, therefore, a more or less abundant source of products, in proportion to the rise or fall of its productiveness.”

Here we have an important concept: the productiveness of  labor.  In other words, in a given society at a given time, how productive is average labor?  It is easy to see in a given case: a man driving in nails with a rock is less productive than one using a hammer; and using a power hammer permits him to be even more productive.  It is clear, then, that the introduction of the power hammer makes anyone using it more productive (that is, can accomplish more in a given time); it follows that the introduction of the power hammer makes the society more productive, albeit by a trivial amount.  Increased productivity means less labor-time spent on a given commodity, which means a lower value, which translates (though we haven’t gotten there yet) to a lower cost.

“The same change in productive power, which increases the fruitfulness of labour, and, in consequence, the quantity of use-values produced by that labour, will diminish the total value of this increased quantity of use-values, provided such change shorten the total labour-time necessary for the production; and vice versa.

Page 46: “On the one hand all labour is, speaking physiologically, an expenditure of human labour-power, and in its character of  identical abstract human labour it creates and forms the value of commodities.  On the other hand, all labour is the expenditure of human labour-power in a special form and with a definite aim and, and in this, its character of concrete human labour, it produces use-values.”

And here we have an interesting footnote: “In order to prove that labour alone is that all-sufficient and real measure, by which at all times the value of all commodities can be estimated and compared, Adam Smith says, ‘Equal quantities of labour must at all times and in all places have the same value for the labourer.  In his normal state of health, strength, and activity, and with the average degree of skill that he may possess, he must always give up the same portion of his rest, his freedom, and his happiness.’ (Wealth of Nations, b1 ch V.)  On the one hand, Adam Smith here (but not everywhere) confuses the determination of value by means of the quantity of labour expended in the production of commodities, with the determination of the values of commodities by means of the value of labour, and seeks in consequence to prove that equal quantities of labour have always the same value.  On the other hand, he has a presentiment, that labour, so far as it manifests itself in the value of commodities, counts only as expenditure of labour-power, but he treats this expenditure as a mere sacrifice of rest, freedom, and happiness, not as at the same time the normal activity of living beings.  But then, he has the modern wage-labourer in his eye.”  Engels makes the additional remark: “The English language has the advantage of possessing different words for the two aspects of labour here considered.  The labour which creates Use-Value, and counts qualitatively is Work, as distinguished from Labour; that which creates Value and count quantitatively is Labour as distinguished from Work.”

Page 44: “Just as, therefore, in viewing the coat and linen as values, we abstract from their different use-values, so it is with the labour represented by those values: we disregard the difference between its useful forms, weaving and tailoring.  As the use-values, coat and linen, are combinations of special productive activities with cloth and yarn, while the values, coat and linen, are, on the other hand, mere homogeneous congelations of undifferentiated labour, so the labour embodied in these latter values does not count by virtue of its productive relation to cloth and yarn, but only as being expenditure of human labour-power.”

My impression is that Marx is taking the same point he made before, and simply coming at it from another angle, much like a mathematician might try to prove a conclusion in several different ways.  The point is still this: that by abstracting from commodities the particular characteristics to leave only value, we are also abstracting the particular sort of labor that created them, leaving only human labor in the abstract.  If there is another point here, I’m missing it.

Page 45: “Coats and linen, however, are not merely values, but values of definite magnitude, and according to our assumption, the coat is worth twice as much as the ten yards of linen.  Whence this difference in their values?  It is owing to the fact that the linen contains only half as much labour as the coat, and consequently, that in the production of the latter, labour-power must have been expended during twice the time necessary for the production of the former.”

Note that labor-power expended is how we get labor.  Intuitively obvious, but worth paying attention to.  I have the ability to labor, but it doesn’t actually change anything until I exert myself.  Once I have done so, that labor, if it isn’t wasted, does something.  Just as an electrical current through a working incandescent bulb transforms itself into light and heat, labor-power, when expended, transforms itself into something else–namely, value.

“While, therefore, with reference to use-value, the labour contained in a commodity counts only qualitatively,  with reference to value it counts only quantitatively, and must first be reduced to human labour pure and simple.  In the former case, it is a question of How and What, in the latter of How much?  How long a time?  Since the magnitude of the value of a commodity represents only the quantity of labour embodied in it, it follows that all commodities, when taken in certain proportions, must be equal in value.”

Any commodity can be exchanged for any other because, with the correct adjustment of quantity, they can be made equal.

This book will be out next January.  Let me get my major complaint out of the way: if you are going form a book as a series of journal entries, you need to always be aware of the state of mind of the writer at the time of making the entry.  For example, if a car crashed into my house creating a fire from which I barely emerged alive, and I wanted to write a journal entry about it, I wouldn’t start the entry: “I got up around ten and made coffee, then checked my email.  Heard from an old high school friend….” unless I was going for effect (which I probably would, but that isn’t the point). It would be more  reasonable for me to say, “Holy fucking shit!  I can’t believe I’m alive!  Okay, let me tell you about MY day!  Jesus.  It was pretty normal until…”  So, yeah, there are too many entries where I had trouble believing they were being written as they were.

All in all, that’s a pretty minor beef.  Also, the thing is set in 1979-1980 in England and Wales, and other than vague mentions of Russo-American antagonism and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, there is no feeling of what was, really a remarkable time in the British Isles and the world (the election of Thatcher, a horrible mine explosion, massive violence in Northern Ireland, Iran becomming an Islamic republic).  I get annoyed with the notion that boarding schools and small towns are so isolated that events in the world don’t penetrate.  I don’t buy it.  But that, too, is pretty minor.

Those complaints aside, this is an amazing book.  I mean, really amazing.  Ever read one of those YA books that drops in the occasional mention of what is obviously a favorite book of the author’s in such a way as to give you the uncomfortable feeling that you’re supposed to like the character because the character likes that book, or maybe likes books, and you end up feeling manipulated?  This ain’t that.  This ain’t that at all.  In this book, we follow Mor, aged 15, as she voraciously read sf just as we did, and it gives her bursts of insight just as it did us. The sf she is reading is part of who she is, and who she is becoming, and it is so real it hurts.  Meanwhile, she’s involved in a magical battle involving faeries, a dead twin sister, and those who would use magic to twist others to their ends.  And the insights from the books she reads and the magical battles keep bouncing off each other in ways that make my head spin.  I need to read this a bunch of times just to start to figure it out.

The timing of her revelations, as we gradually learn about the key incidents of the past, is perfect.  Forgive me for falling into cliche, but, “the deft touch of the master” is the only way to describe it.

A couple years ago, at Fourth Street Fantasy convention, Mrissa Lingan made the (to me) profound observation that characterization is a relationship, or a set of relationships–it’s not about this person, it’s how this person interacts with that person, and that one, and the other one.  I’ve never seen a better example of that than this book–each set of relationships reinforces every other, and makes Mor stunningly real.  Not to mention that the first person narrative is, to my mind, flawless; nailing the thought processes of a 15-year-old, very bright, articulate reader is a triumph. Also, it helps that I like her.

But there is one thing for which I will never forgive Jo Walton: As the book is set in 1979-1980, and as my first book didn’t come out until 1983, I will never get to hear what Mor thought of Jhereg, and that pisses me off!

For those who aren’t following the situation with Reesa, we got the pathology today from the tests after the mastectomies, and all tests are negative.  All indications are they got all the cancer.

We are very happy people here.

I will probably be falling into little pieces very soon.